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no power?

hi, all well have an old compaq presario running xp pro, the system froze in the middle of running utorrent and it doesn't have a restart button on the case, so had to hold the power button in to shutdown, but after that it would not power up, the led area beside the power button turned red and then after hitting the button again it went out no power at all, anyways, I've tryed 3 tested power supplys since and still no power at all, is it possible to get a bad power button?
if so this may be my first case of this

Doesn't sound like a power issue to me, more like a motherboard fault.

Either it has failed completely, or the BIOS needs to be reset. There should be a jumper on the motherboard that you can pull and reset while powered down. This of course would require knowing the motherboard manufacturer and getting the specs on it to find the particular jumper that would reset the BIOS.

Otherwise, try (while powered down) pulling the battery from the motherboard. Pull the battery, wait 30 seconds or so, then replace the battery and reboot. Immediately go to your BIOS setup (if you can get that far) and disable Floppy drives. Correct the system timeclock while you're in there, too.

On a side note, have you recently removed/added any hardware from the MOBO, or been tinkering around with overclocking? That makes a huge difference. I had the same problem when I tried to overclock my box farther than the power supply could handle. I had to do the jumper reset that I described above to get a green light and make it to the BIOS.

Remove the plug and try it in a different wall socket. Then try replacing the fuse in the plug? Then just try another power cable. I do agree with O~, but that will confirm the matter?

I've tryed 3 tested power supplys

What do you mean by that? you mean the PSU box in the PC or the cables as I suggested above?

If you have tried a tested and working wall socket with a tested and working cable then it is the PSU or Mobo (as O~ suggested).

The big problem that I see is that people don't look after the PSU............ they let it fill with crap, they buy cheap ones and so forth.........

When the PSU craps out it tends to take a lot of stuff with it, and replacing the PSU will not repair the damage.

I would suggest taking components like the HDD(s), memory sticks, video card, and so forth and testing them in another computer. At least that will tell you what is recoverable?

Good luck!

EDIT:

the system froze in the middle of running utorrent

Ha! the RIAA and MPAA owe me megabucks........... it works!

Muhahahahahahahahahahahaha

Last edited by nihil; November 14th, 2007 at 06:58 PM.

If you cannot do someone any good: don't do them any harm....
As long as you did this to one of these, the least of my little ones............you did it unto Me.
What profiteth a man if he gains the entire World at the expense of his immortal soul?

BTW, I agree, it's the motherboard. That's why it crashed.
Well, if three different power supplies don't work. If the led
lights up, the switch is OK. Wiggle and reseat all the components.
Try a video card if you have a spare. I've even seen hard drives that
would cause these symptoms, nothing on the screen, no beeps, nothing.
Any component with a short circuit will cause the whole system to appear dead